


Nights in the Castle

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Crack and Angst, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-03
Updated: 2009-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21654781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Mir decided to put Rosemary and Hilbert through a fairy tale simulation where Hilbert gets turned into a beast. I realized this proooooobably resulted in Rosemary having some sort of late-in-life realization that she's a furry and wound up writing this to take place in the gaps.Also featuring the Pryce and Carter peanut gallery, with Carter attempting to make out with Pryce when she's TRYING to do WORK, William.(Repost of something deleted from my other account. Originally written some time in 2018-2019, backdated to hopefully take out of current search.)
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character, Marcus Cutter/Miranda Pryce





	Nights in the Castle

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Compatible](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15308004) by [mirawonderfulstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar). 



They wandered the castle for what felt like hours, examining this room and that, both still shivering and wet from the rain, Karl still shaky from his unexpected transformation. Rosemary kept letting little angry huffs out at the state of things, and Karl found them adorable, even as time dragged on and they grew more and more exhausted. When they finally found the bedroom, with its big four-poster bed and a blanket that, when shaken mostly free of dust, was covered in stars, they were both fit to collapse.

“You strip that damp clothing off and get under that blanket,” Rosemary said, crossing the room to the wardrobe and opening its doors to examine the contents. In the way of a dream, instead of splitting at the seams as Karl had been transformed into his new, beastly form, the clothing had instead reshaped itself to his new body. Well, all except the boots, which had disappeared entirely. Karl was a little concerned that he'd somehow absorbed them, that they'd provided the material for the leathery paw pads he now sported on his hands and feet.

“What about you, suka?” He asked as he pulled the shirt over his head. “Surely you must be just as tired as I am.”

Rosemary shot him an sardonic look over her shoulder. “You know, there's something amusing about you calling me a bitch when you look like nothing so much as a hairless cat.”

Karl rescued his glasses from the shirt and tossed it aside before perching them carefully back on his nose. “A cat?”

Rosemary nodded. “With horns.”

Karl examined his hands again, the fingers that were shorter, stubbier, less dexterous than they had been before, with their leathery paw pads and sharp claws. “I suppose that explains the claws,” he said, before starting in on the top pair of buttons on the flap closure to his trousers.

“And the beans,” Rosemary said in a distracted tone as she shuffled through the contents of the wardrobe.

“Beans?” Karl asked, distracted himself by the contents of the trousers. Well, that was… unusual.

His eye was caught by the motion of Rosemary wiggling her fingers at him over her shoulder. He seemed to be much more sensitive to motion in his peripheral vision than he had been.

“Yeah. Beans,” she said.

He abandoned his examination of his lower half and took another look at his paw pads. Yes, he supposed they did look a bit like beans. 

Over by the wardrobe, Rosemary let out a sigh of exasperation. “Like I thought. Not a single nightgown, just shirts and trousers and more of these damned dresses.” She looked down at what she was wearing, the sliver of her profile that he could see wearing rueful expression.

Karl figured out how to get the pants off—a more challenging task than he’d anticipated, now that his legs seemed to have gone digitigrade and a tail seemed to have sprouted from the end of his spine—then clambered in to the bed and sank in to what was a surprisingly comfortable mattress. “Well, it is not as if I have not seen you naked,” he said. “But if modesty is really something you are worried about, I imagine those shirts are built for my new stature and are more than ample enough to keep you covered.”

Rosemary shot him a little glare that was surprisingly adorable, and Karl smiled and patted the bed next to him. “Come to bed, kotik. Get yourself warm.”

“I'm not sure you calling me a pussycat is any less amusing in your current state than you calling me a bitch,” came Rosemary’s dry response, but she stripped herself efficiently of the gauzy gown, which had been clinging to her legs and had been even more distracting in its way than her naked body ever was, and pulled one of the billowing shirts out of the wardrobe and over her head. As Karl had predicted, she was swamped in it, a full foot of sleeve hanging beyond each hand and the hemline coming to rest at about knee height. She sighed and shoved the sleeves up her arms awkwardly, then pulled her wig off, hanging it on one of the bed posts before clambering in to the other side of the bed, where Karl had thrown the covers back for her. He used his new and remarkably expansive arm span to cover her up again, both of them sneezing at the little cloud of dust this threw up.

“First thing tomorrow, I'm going to find a place to give this blanket a good beating,” Rosemary muttered, curling up in the little ball she usually slept in, her back to him. After a moment, she shot him a look over her shoulder. “Well? Are you going to get over here and keep me warm?” she asked.

Karl wiggled his hand with its new, vicious claws at her. “I am afraid I will harm you by accident.”

“I'm not,” Rosemary said softly, then sighed. “Roll over and scoot my way.”

Karl gave her a peculiar look, but complied, finding he had to negotiate the maneuver carefully now that he had a tail. When he was settled again, he felt movement from the other side of the bed, and then the warm weight of Rosemary’s body pressing against his back and of her arm wrapping around his waist.

Karl smiled.

And then, they slept. 

When Karl woke again, they both seemed to have turned in their sleep. Karl’s new form was large enough that he felt like he could cover Rosemary entirely with his body if he tried, but as it was, he appeared to have tucked Rosemary against his chest protectively in his sleep, almost sheltering her from the outside world. He wondered for a moment if this was what Al—a giant of a man who was one of Rosemary’s former lovers, and now turned surprisingly good friend to them both—felt like all the time. If so, it explained why the man was so damned cocky. It was a heady experience; Rosemary wasn't a small woman in any respect but height, and she was so fierce she was difficult to protect. But in this form, he was larger than her in every way… and without a doubt, fiercer.

Well, perhaps just about as fierce. Rosemary might not have claws, but that wouldn't keep her from ripping you to shreds.

He nuzzled the top of her head, taking in the scent of her. He seemed to have gained an animal’s ability to smell things not evident to a human nose, and Rosemary smelled… well. He’d always found her scent enticing, but this was another experience entirely.

Rosemary stirred in his arms, and he instinctively pulled her even closer to his chest. “Good morning,” he murmured in her ear.

“Good morning,” she said back, and then, “You remember that Pryce and Carter are getting readouts of everything that happens in here, don’t you?”

The sudden reminder was even more effective than a bucket of cold water would have been. Karl shuddered and released Rosemary at once. “Apologies, suka _._ I did not remember.”

“It’s all right,” she said, turning herself around to look at him, reaching a hesitant hand up to stroke the side of his neck, caressing him gently. “You feel like a really nice suede jacket,” she said. “And you are a great deal more wrinkly all over than I expected,” she continued, glancing down at his chest.

“You should see what has happened between my legs,” he offered up in tone of dry amusement.

“I caught a glimpse when you were getting in to bed,” Rosemary responded, sounding as if she was holding back a laugh. “That will take some getting used to in the bathroom, I imagine.”

“It is really the _tail_ I am concerned about,” Karl said, glancing over his shoulder, where the tip of it was peeking out from under the blanket. It seemed to have a mind of its own.

Rosemary gave in to her laughter.

Later that morning, as they tried to prepare breakfast in the castle’s rundown kitchen, Rosemary had turned cranky and irritable, berating him for eating the flower petal that had caused his transformation. But the warmth of the morning still lingered with Karl despite it all.

Miranda eyed the readouts of Rosemary and Kelley’s mental states with disgust. “Ugh. Really?”

William peered over her shoulder. “What is it?”

“I keep getting spikes in blood pressure and heart rate from the two of them,” Miranda said with a snort.

“Think they're encountering something dangerous?”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “I think they're horny as hell for one another, if the rest of these readouts are accurate.”

William looked at the readouts with increased interest. “I _see_.”

“Oh, don't use that tone with me.”

William’s hand came down on her shoulder, his thumb caressing the skin just above the neckline of her shirt. “No, it's good news. Simple… _animal_ _attraction_ is a lot easier to manage than a more, shall we say, _robust_ connection.”

“A relationship can have both, you know,” Miranda shot back.

“Oh, don't I know it,” William muttered, lowering his head to press a kiss at the juncture of her shoulder and neck.

Miranda shivered, but kept her eyes locked on the readouts on the screens in front of her, and after a moment William must have realized he wasn't going to distract her that easily while she was in the middle of something and retreated to the opposite side of the room.

By the end of their first full day in the castle, Rosemary was so physically exhausted that she fell on the bed face-first, without bothering to take her wig off or strip out of the gauzy dress she’d been wearing all day. She knew she probably should; the dress was covered in smears of grime and dust, and it wasn’t doing the blanket she’d spent half an hour beating into submission any good. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to care.

She felt a weight depress the other side of the bed, and then warmth near her ear as Karl leaned over her. “Shall I remove dress for you, _suka_?” he asked, his voice even more of a gravely purr in his current form than it ever had been as a human, even at his most seductive. Rosemary found herself deeply regretting the fact that she knew Pryce would be keeping a close eye on their readouts.

She tried to lift her arms and found she could barely move them. “If you’re not worried about the claws still,” she said.

“Have been experimenting,” he responded, and she felt him insert the tip of one claw beneath the back of her gown. He didn’t attempt the buttons; instead, he slit the dress down the back with his claw, from the neck to the hem. Well. In the state it was in, it wouldn’t have been good for anything but rags anyway.

Rosemary found herself shivering a bit, definitely not from the cold, as Karl pulled the gown away from her body. She managed to turn her head to the side to look at him. He had obviously removed his own clothing before climbing into bed with her, or at least everything above the waist; the lower half of his body was covered by the blanket. He was staring raptly down at her. She felt the trace of his paw pads down her spine, the slightest pressure of those wicked claws of his. And then he pulled back, obviously remembering what she had said about Pryce that morning.

Somehow, she rolled herself over and lifted her arms enough to shove the dress sleeves off, then she wadded the dress up and threw it as far as she could manage. It drifted wispily to a halt at the end of the bed. Karl tugged the blanket out from under her and covered her as well, then his arm snaked around her middle and, without hesitation, he pulled her tight against him, tucking her body close inside the curve of his own, as if trying to keep her safe.

He was most definitely completely naked.

And so was she.

He nuzzled the top of her head and then let out an amused little huff, and he extracted the wig carefully from her head, reaching up to hang it off the closest bedpost. He was obviously enjoying the increased arm-span his current form gave him.

They lay there in silence, both breathing heavily, but not with sleep. When she’d fallen into the bed, Rosemary had suspected that she was too physically exhausted to fall asleep easily, but now a tension of another kind wound its way through her. Karl seemed to notice the tension, if not necessarily the source, and he nuzzled her again and spoke.

“What is wrong?”

Rosemary sighed and opted for a half-truth. “I’m getting a little too old to spend my days in physical labor, that’s all.”

“Oh?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m well into my sixties now, Kelley.”

There was a silence. Perhaps he had.

He did not speak again; instead, she felt the cautious, careful prod of his wide fingers with their leathery pads, digging in to her muscles, soothing aches. Rosemary let out a whimper as he found a sore spot in her lower back; he dug his thumb in harder, the tip of his claw just barely pricking her skin as he did. The prick of his claw broke through that other tension she’d been feeling, reminding her that this was not real, that Pryce was watching, that all these aches and pains were the result of labor that hadn’t actually happened.

She sighed, and managed to relax her body, and Karl tucked his arm back over her protectively, pulling her close to him again. And then, like a light going out, she fell asleep.

“There they go again,” Miranda said.William set the report he'd been reading down and crossed the room to look at the readouts. “Every eight minutes or so, another spike of arousal. Honestly, at their age…”

William smiled down at his counterpart. “The both of them are younger than we are, Miranda. And I've found that it's no trouble at all to, ah, _arouse_ your baser instincts.” He leaned down again to press another kiss to Miranda's shoulder. She shivered and allowed it, but swatted him away irritably when he tried for a second kiss.

“ _You’ve_ only got five years on Epps.” Miranda paused. “And she's got one on me.”

William smiled. “Ah, a warning that you only plan to accept my advances for another year, I take it, and then shriveled spinsterhood for the rest of your life?”

This got a glare from Miranda, those marvelous mechanical eyes of hers turning away from the computer screens in front of her, eyelids narrowed, eyebrows lowered. “I'm not going to dignify that with a response,” was all she said before returning her gaze to the readouts.

William laughed.

Rosemary woke, stretched, winced. Every muscle in her body screamed with pain, but she suspected it wasn't nearly as bad as it would have been if Karl hadn't taken the time to massage the worst of the knots out of her body the night before, if he hadn't been up against her body all night, warming her through like a giant and slightly furry hot water bottle. His arm tightened around her middle for a moment as she carefully stretched, pulling her back against his body almost instinctively, then he opened his eyes, blinking blearily down at her, and released her.

“I think we should start wearing clothing to bed,” Rosemary said, a little breathless.

“I like being skin to skin with you,” he murmured, tracing the curve of her shoulder with one leathery paw pad.

“A little too much, I suspect.”

Karl froze, then lifted the blanket and peered underneath, examining his own lower half. “Ah. That is… more unusual than I was expecting.” He lifted his head and gave her an appalled look. “Apologies, suka.”

Rosemary felt flushed, overheated. She threw the blanket off and extracted herself from the bed, ignoring the way her muscles protested the action. “No worries,” she said in a rushed, awkward tone. “It's a natural bodily function. I know you don't mean anything by it.”

“Well, I would not say that,” came Karl’s murmured response, and a quick glance over from where she stood at the wardrobe revealed the fact that he was looking her over appreciatively.

Rosemary suspected her skin might never cool again.

Somehow, she resisted the urge to throw caution entirely to the wind and climb back in bed with him.

“I think the really distressing thing,” Miranda said conversationally, watching Rosemary and Kelley’s heart rates spike again, “Is the fact that as far as I know, drastic bodily modification isn't _entirely_ out of the question for a scenario like this.”

“Oh?” William sounded distracted. Miranda glanced over her shoulder and saw he was reading one of the reports he'd brought with him.

“Which brings to mind the distinction you were making between a relationship that's purely physical and something deeper,” Miranda continued, turning back to the readouts. “If they're both human, that's one thing, but if one or the both of them of them have undergone some sort of transformation in the dream state, becoming, I don’t know, a monster or a robot or something, and they're _still_ experiencing this level of arousal…”

“ _Oh._ ” She had William’s attention now. And then: “Oh, we're _definitely_ trying it out next.”

Miranda scoffed and rolled her eyes. “ _Not_ the point I was trying to make here, William.”

He had crossed the room to hover behind her chair, and there was the gentle rub of his thumb just above the neckline of her shirt again. “What point was that, exactly?” And there it was, the press of his lips on her neck.

“That you are completely insatiable, apparently,” Miranda muttered, and then cleared her throat, swatting him away again. “The point is that you should make sure to find out about that sort of thing when you do the follow-up interview. It will give context to the data I'm gathering.”

They were careful after that to change their clothing before climbing in to the big bed together, Karl switching over to clean trousers, Rosemary borrowing one of his shirts. To Rosemary’s obvious amusement, Karl always snagged the shirt she’d slept in as they were getting dressed in the morning, and wore it for that day’s work. He didn’t try to justify it to her. She probably would have laughed if he’d confessed that he liked having the smell of her close, as they parted ways to work on separate parts of the castle throughout the day.

Karl knew it was all a dream, an illusion, but all the same, part of him didn’t want it to end. Rosemary had never been one to accept domesticity easily, not back when they’d first attempted a relationship, and not in their recent attempt to regain a little of what they’d lost more than ten years before. But here, she had no choice, and as the days wore on, she relaxed into it.

“I am the goddess of plumbing!” she declared one day almost a week into their stay, as Karl came into the kitchen to start preparations for dinner.

“Oh?” Karl felt the corners of his mouth twitch into a smile. Rosemary’s more ridiculous pronouncements tended to have that effect on him.

“Oh, yes.” She quirked a challenging eyebrow at him and turned one of the large brass handles at the gigantic stone kitchen sink. Water rushed out of the tap, steaming faintly, and Karl stared in shock.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see what kind of magic I can manage to work on the bathroom before dinner time,” she said, brushing past him with a triumphant smirk on her face.

Karl turned and watched her go, and wanted this to last forever.

But instead, there was a ballroom, a mob, an egg, and Karl found himself clinging to Rosemary’s lifeless form as the world around them dissolved into smoke.

Miranda listened from the other room as William worked his way through the interview, looking over the data she had gathered as she did. Every once in a while, though, something would catch her ear, and after the first half hour she heard a pattern. Sometimes, Rosemary would answer a question, her voice firm and truthful, but when William turned to Doctor Kelley to confirm it, the scientist would take longer than usual to answer, stumble over his words. It was the only audible sign Miranda could hear that Rosemary was interleaving half-truths and outright lies into her own answers, and part of her wished that she still had respiration and heart rate monitors still hooked up to the two of them.

Miranda had always known that Rosemary was protective of the scientists in her care, had always known that there were times when she didn’t quite tell William everything. Rosemary had even lied to William’s face on Miranda’s behalf, a time or two. But Miranda hadn’t quite realized how good a liar Rosemary had become in the twenty-five years she’d spent at Goddard, and faced with this evidence, Miranda found herself wondering how deep it went. Did Rosemary’s heart rate leap? Did her breathing change? Her pupils dilate?

Sometimes William pressed when Dr. Kelley exhibited these signs of a lie sitting uncomfortably on his shoulders, and sometimes William did not. After a while, Miranda found the pattern; it was only when the lies might have covered up something that involved an action they had taken the dream state that he pushed. Overall, it seemed that Rosemary was being truthful enough about the actual actions that had taken place in the dream state, and those actions were damning enough. If she wanted to cover up a few of the more emotionally fraught portions of the experience… somehow, Miranda couldn’t quite blame her.

But of course, it was a problem, and they would need to bring an end to it somehow. Providing a protective layerof lies between the scientists she managed and Carter was one thing, but Rosemary managing to hide as much of her emotional involvement as she had managed to hide, through two hours of William at his most compelling… it was a definite sign that Rosemary’s loyalties had shifted, and that could not be allowed to stand.

“She was lying to you,” Miranda said from the doorway to the office, after Rosemary and Dr. Kelley had gone.

“I know,” William said with a wry little smile, watching Miranda cross the room to him. “I’m not sure she realized that the lies were just as revealing as the truth would have been.” He waited to speak again until she was sitting on the table in front of him, one leg crossed over the other. “So. Did you get everything you needed?”

“Yes, I think so. I should have enough information about the their minds to selectively remove and replace memories."

“Excellent.”

Karl caught Rosemary before they were out of the lab complex, and he grabbed her hand. Somehow, she didn’t quite have the heart to break his grip on her, despite feeling like this had been too easy, despite _knowing_ that something worse had to be on its way. Something about Karl’s hand, gripped tight in her own, reassured her that they might weather whatever storm lay ahead.

Karl had not expected Rosemary to grip his hand just as hard as he was gripping hers, but she did, pulling him after her into her apartment after she’d unlocked the door with her free hand. The instant they were inside, the door locked behind them, she backed Karl up against a wall, pulled his face down to hers, and began kissing him, letting out a needy little growl. After a few minutes where Karl barely had space to take a breath, her lips broke away from his mouth and started in on his neck as her hands worked at his clothing, undressing him.

Karl stared down at the top of her wig, bemused. “Rosemary?

The only response was another needy growl and the press of her body up against his.

“Not that I mind this,” he said mildly, “but I did think we were going to have a drink first. And then you were going to have a soak? And sit around in your robe?”

Rosemary made a frustrated noise as she fumbled with the buckle of his belt. “Forget the drink. Forget the drink, forget the soak, forget the robe. I spent the entire damn week we were in that dream state wanting to climb you like a tree and fuck you senseless, and it was only the knowledge that Pryce would see that stopped me, even if she was only getting readouts of our mental state.” She worked his belt free and let out a little sigh of satisfaction.

Karl pushed her away from him so that he could start in on removing her clothing as well, but found himself even more bemused. “What, even when I had skin like a wrinkly suede jacket and horns on my head?”

“Especially when you had skin like a wrinkly suede jacket and horns on your head,” Rosemary said vehemently, helping him with the buttons of her blouse.

Karl smirked. “Why, Rosemary. I did not know you had such a taste for the exotic.”

Rosemary’s expression switched from sultry to sardonic in an instant, and she smirked back. “Strong words from a man who spends as much time thinking about cephalopods as you do, Kelley,” she purred.

Karl felt himself blush to the tips of his ears. “Let us never speak of this again.”

Rosemary leaned in close again, nipping his neck with her teeth. “I promise, provided you’re inside of me within the next ten seconds.”

He suspected the remaining pieces of clothing that they both tore away frantically on their mad dash to the bedroom would never be the same again, but somehow, he managed to comply.


End file.
